The Blackhawks are still streaking with the help of rookie Brandon Saad. SN's Jesse Spector talks about that, the struggles of the St. Louis Blues and a pair of injured star goalies in this week's Five Hole.

His weekly chat with Tom van der Voort is above.

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Saad plants seeds

As if the Chicago Blackhawks needed to get any better, the 20-0-3 juggernaut is only starting to see what 20-year-old Brandon Saad is capable of doing. The 2011 second-round draft pick has four goals and four assists, a fairly low total considering that he has spent more than 75 percent of his 5-on-5 minutes alongside Jonathan Toews and Marian Hossa, but things are starting to click for the rookie winger. Saad has six points in his last seven games, including a goal and two assists in Tuesday night’s 5-3 win over the Minnesota Wild.

“He had some (NHL) games early and late and had a real good junior year (with Saginaw in the OHL) last year,” Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said last week in St. Louis. “We feel playing in Rockford (in the AHL during the lockout) this year helped him as well. He’s got a chance to play with a couple of real good players this year in Tazer and Hoss. It’s been a real good line for us as far as they seem to have a lot of offensive zone time, puck possession, strength on the puck. The production might not reflect how effective they’ve been, but he’s been a real nice fit for us and we expect him to improve off these levels.”

The possession numbers bear out Quenneville’s point. On a team that generally has dominated possession, three of the five best Corsi rates (measuring shot attempts for and against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 while a player on the ice), belong to Toews, Saad, and Hossa. In turn, the production starting to pick up is fair reward.

“I’m having a lot of fun,” Saad told Sporting News. “Those two guys, they’re obviously unbelievable players, and for me to get this opportunity, it’s been even more fun, and then the win streak has even made it more fun. I grew up watching these guys, and last year a little bit more, and I got that taste of it. I’m more comfortable this year, and getting more games, I’m getting more and more comfortable every night.”

Saad began the process last season with 20 points in 31 games for Rockford (his first professional experience) then slid into Chicago’s lineup for two regular-season game and two playoff games. He picked up an assist in Game 5 against the Phoenix Coyotes.

“It helped out tremendously,” Saad said. “It was such a good experience for me, just huge for my confidence and things like that. It was great coming in this year knowing I had a taste from the year before.”

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Blues Clues

The underpinning philosophy of hockey's advanced stats movement is that possession is paramount. After all, you can’t score if you don’t shoot, and you can’t shoot if you don’t have the puck. Players who drive possession are seen as most valuable, which is why the statistical community’s greatest wish is to get hard numbers on passing accuracy.

Another item on the wish list should be measuring time of possession, both overall and in the opponent’s end of the rink. Anyone have a stopwatch?

“Your 5-on-5 play is a direct reflection of how much time you spend in the other team’s zone, and we just don’t spend enough time in the other team’s zone right now to be a consistent winning hockey club,” Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said. “We have to manage the puck better. I think when you manage the puck well, you just end up being a really good 5-on-5 team. You end up creating garbage scoring chances – zone-time, wear-down scoring chances. When you don’t spend enough time in the offensive zone, it’s hard to be a good 5-on-5 team. … We look at it every day and we need to be a lot better on puck management. To be a consistent winning team, I was telling the guys today, even Chicago, with their skill, they manage the puck properly, and they end up – at the end of the day, if you’re constantly managing the puck properly, the other team ends up not having it, or cracks and makes a mistake.”

The numbers that try to measure possession agree with Hitchcock. Nine of the top 10 teams in the NHL in 5-on-5 Corsi rating last season made the playoffs, including the Stanley Cup champion Kings, who were No. 2 in the league in getting pucks toward the net compared to their opponents, even though they struggled to get those pucks in the net. Likewise, eight of the 10 teams at the top of the leaderboard for faceoffs taken in the offensive zone made the playoffs.

The Kings lead the league in both categories this season according to hockeyanalysis.com, while the Blues have dropped from fifth in Corsi last season to ninth this season. It also has not helped the Blues at all that Brian Elliott has been nowhere near last year’s All-Star level in goal.

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Waiver ravers

Beyond the news that the Flames would have had to put Ryan O'Reilly on waivers had the Avalanche not matched his offer sheet, it has been a big week for the cannon fodder of newspaper agate pages everywhere. The Capitals claimed Aaron Volpatti from the Canucks on Thursday, Vancouver grabbed Tom Sestito from the Flyers on Friday and Nashville plucked Bobby Butler from the Devils and Zach Boychuk from the Penguins on Monday and Tuesday. Boychuk’s waiver move was his second of the year, as Pittsburgh had snagged him from the Hurricanes in January.

The only cost of adding a player on waivers is the nominal claiming fee, and of course taking on his contract. All four players claimed in the past week have expiring deals and cap hits under $1 million. Those are pretty much the lowest-risk moves available to a general manager trying to address an in-season need for a fourth liner (Volpatti, Sestito) or a scorer who might be described in baseball as a Quadruple-A player (Butler, Boychuk) and worth a roll of the dice for a team struggling to find the back of the net (Nashville).

So, well done, George McPhee in Washington, Mike Gillis in Vancouver (even though losing Volpatti for nothing drew a bit of criticism), and David Poile in Nashville. Conducting smart business is what makes their teams perennial playoff squads, this year’s struggles in Washington aside. Obviously, no team is going to make the postseason just because it claims players off waivers, but using the system effectively is indicative of a shrewd manager.

Meanwhile, there are the Flames, working on a fourth consecutive playoff-free campaign, and the Edmonton Oilers, well on their way to a seventh straight year outside the Western Conference’s top eight. What did those teams do in the past week?

Before the O’Reilly imbroglio, Jay Feaster decided that he needed to add toughness, so he acquired Brian McGrattan from the Predators for minor-league defenseman Joe Piskula. There is nothing wrong with that acquisition, per se, as McGrattan is on a one-year, $600,000 deal and Piskula didn't factor into Calgary’s plans in any way, but it was an odd trade to make considering that Feaster could have claimed McGrattan on waivers the day before. Claiming McGrattan would have put the Flames at the NHL limit of 50 contracts, meaning they would not have been able to sign O’Reilly to an offer sheet. Feaster should've have known that was a fool’s errand anyway.

Maybe it’s the high elevation in Alberta. Edmonton’s Steve Tambellini gave up a conditional 2014 fourth-round pick – the pick can improve based on the Oilers’ performance – to get Mike Brown from the Maple Leafs. Brown, a health risk every time he does his job and drops the gloves, is signed through next season, and at 5-11 and 205 pounds does not have the size that the Oilers actually need up front. Volpatti, Sestito and McGrattan all would have been a better fit, and all could have been on the Oilers’ roster had Tambellini for nothing, rather than a draft pick that the Maple Leafs can now use to potentially improve their team long after Brown leaves Edmonton.

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Mail call

“With Cam Ward’s injury, what are the Hurricanes’ options at goalie for the next 6-8 weeks and how will it impact their record when he comes back considering their defense isn’t the best or deepest in the league?” –Martin Molloy

Ward going down with a third-degree MCL sprain is obviously bad news for the Hurricanes, whose No. 1 goalie was 9-6-1 with a .908 save percentage and 2.84 goals-against average. Those are hardly sparkling numbers, but it is important to note — as Martin did — – the Hurricanes’ defense not being the NHL’s strongest: Carolina has allowed 30.7 shots on goal per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 play, the seventh-highest rate in the league.

Things may not be as bad as they seem for the Hurricanes, though. Even though Ward has been a workhorse in his NHL career, Carolina can turn to Dan Ellis, and while the 32-year-old still may be the butt of Internet jokes for some Twitter blunders during a disastrous 31-game tenure with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2010-11, he has posted a .917 save percentage since then as a backup with the Ducks and Hurricanes, including .923 in seven games this season.

Ellis will split time with Justin Peters, who made his first NHL start of the season on Tuesday, a 37-save, 4-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres. Peters was 22-12-1 for the Charlotte Checkers in the AHL this season, with a .921 save percentage and 2.29 goals against average, and Tuesday was his 29th NHL game, so he’s not a total neophyte at this level.

The question is whether Ellis or Peters can thrive with an NHL starter’s workload. The smart move for Kirk Muller would be to look to Vancouver and emulate the Canucks’ rotation, encouraging competition between his two goaltenders with an eye on eventually settling on a No. 1. The big question comes at crunch time — if Ward returns and the Hurricanes are fighting for a playoff spot (or in the playoffs), how do you work in a goalie who’s been on the shelf for two months if one or both of the replacements are playing well? But that’s a much better problem to have.

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Mail Call No. 2

“Hey Jesse, which version of the New Jersey Devils is the REAL New Jersey Devils? The team that started the season first in the East, or the team that’s gone 0-5-1 in the last six?” —Puddy from NJ

The answer lies somewhere in between, but probably closer to the team that made everyone wonder how they were getting along so well without Zach Parise. It’s not a coincidence that the Devils’ slump has coincided with Martin Brodeur nursing a bad back, forcing Johan Hedberg to go from 39-year-old backup to 39-year-old starter. Yes, the regular starter in New Jersey is 40, but the regular starter in New Jersey is also arguably the greatest goaltender in history.

With Hedberg giving up 21 goals in six starts since Brodeur's exit, it is a particularly inopportune time for Ilya Kovalchuk to be in a slump, with one goal on 21 shots during the losing streak. Throw in some predictable regression from David Clarkson, with no goals on 26 shots after scoring on 10 of his first 60 this season, and it’s the perfect recipe for a team to hit the skids. None of these issues would appear to be long-term concerns, though Brodeur’s back obviously bears watching, so the Devils should still expect to get to the playoffs to defend their Eastern Conference title.